The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer (9 page)

On November 26, Major Elliott and the Osage Indian scouts came across a fresh trail near Antelope Hills made by warriors returning from a raid on homesteaders in Kansas. Custer dispatched Elliott to follow the trail while he marched the main column forward through the deep snow.

Cheyenne chief Black Kettle and several subchiefs had returned to their camp on the Washita that night after a meeting at Fort Cobb with Colonel William Hazen, who had the unenviable task of determining which Indians were hostile and which were friendly. Hazen was convinced that Black Kettle was indeed peaceful, but advised the chief to personally make peace with Sheridan in the field to ensure his safety. The general could not easily be located, and Black Kettle simply went home. Although the chief's wife warned him that he should move the village that night, Black Kettle was convinced that the soldiers would wait for more favorable conditions and not brave the freezing temperatures and blizzard conditions to attack.

That opinion by the chief was probably true of most commanders in the field—but not this particular commander. George Armstrong Custer was undeterred by fatigue, weather conditions, or any other obstacle in his way to carrying out his orders. He was determined to aggressively follow orders and protect the lives and property of those innocent homesteaders.

Custer led his troops through the bone-chilling cold and dense morning fog until eventually halting on a ridge overlooking the Washita River. Below was situated a village of fifty-one lodges under Chief Black Kettle.

Custer sounded officer's call to detail his plan of attack. The regiment would be separated into four detachments. Major Joel Elliott would attack from the northeast with companies G, H, and M; Captain William Thompson would lead companies B and F from the south; Captain Edward Myers with companies E and I from the west; and Custer with two squadrons commanded by Captain Louis Hamilton and Captain Robert West, along with Cooke's sharpshooters, would strike from the north. Eighty men under quartermaster First Lieutenant James M. Bell would remain with the wagon train.

At dawn on November 27, 1868—as a shot rang out from within the village—the buglers sounded the charge and the Seventh Cavalry swept into the unsuspecting village. Bullets peppered the air, and most of the Indians fled their lodges to take refuge in the nearby timber or ravines or raced for the river. Chief Black Kettle and his wife tried to flee on his pony but were shot dead at the river.

In the opening moments, Captain Hamilton was shot through the heart and Captain Albert Barnitz was critically wounded. Thompson was late in arriving on the field, creating a gap between his command and that of Elliott, which permitted a number of Indians to escape.

While the battle along the Washita River raged, Major Elliott, without informing Custer, had rallied a group of volunteers to follow him downstream to chase Indians escaping from Black Kettle's village. As Elliott and his men galloped past Lieutenant Owen Hale, the major called out, “Here goes for a brevet or a coffin!”

Custer's cavalry controlled the village within ten minutes of the charge. They spent the remainder of the morning eliminating small pockets of resistance—103 Indians were killed, according to Custer's report. At one point, the overzealous command of Captain Myers, contrary to explicit orders issued by Custer, was observed firing into a group of women and children. Custer dispatched scout Ben Clark to order Myers to stop shooting and instead capture all noncombatants.

Meanwhile, Custer ordered that the entire Cheyenne village be destroyed. Bonfires soon blazed, and every possession belonging to the tribe was thrown onto the flames. While sorting through the contents of the village, Custer's men found mail, daguerreotypes, clothing, and other items taken from white settlements by raiding parties.

Custer had implemented total war to perfection on Black Kettle's village. In addition to 103 killed and 53 women and children taken prisoner, the property loss was devastating. The pony herd estimated at 875 was destroyed, and the entire village—every lodge, buffalo robes, weapons, blankets, large quantities of dried meat and food stores, tobacco, and clothing—was either confiscated or burned to ashes.

At about noon, swarms of warriors from the villages downstream began massing to fire from the surrounding bluffs, which placed Custer in a precarious position. Fortunately, Lieutenant Bell bravely fought his way through the Indians with a critical resupply of ammunition. Custer formed his men into a defensive perimeter while the burning of the village was completed.

Additional warriors continued to arrive—perhaps as many as fifteen hundred now rimmed the bluffs—and the cavalrymen were for all intents and purposes surrounded by this superior force. It was approaching dusk, and Custer realized that he must withdraw.

Major Elliott and his men, however, had not returned. Custer dispatched Captain Edward Myers to scout downstream for any sign of the missing men. Myers reported that he ventured about two miles without success.

By this time, Custer's outnumbered Seventh Cavalry was under attack by bands of warriors from the villages downstream and it was imperative that they withdraw without delay. It was assumed that Elliott had simply become lost and would eventually find his own way back to the supply train.

Custer could not risk sacrificing his command by waiting any longer for Elliott, who had disobeyed orders and ridden away of his own accord. He mounted his troops and, in a bold tactical move, ordered the band to play “Ain't I Glad to Get Out of the Wilderness” while marching down the valley toward the downstream villages. When the surprised warriors hurriedly fell back to defend their families, Custer, with darkness as an ally, countermarched his command and escaped to the supply train.

Two days later, the Seventh Cavalry arrived triumphantly at Camp Supply—without Major Joel Elliott and his missing troopers.

Fifty-three women and children had been taken prisoner at Washita, including a girl named Mo-nah-se-tah, who would act as an interpreter throughout the remainder of the campaign and become a subject of controversy in Custer's personal life.

One of the most enduring and debated rumors about Custer concerns the nature of his relationship with Mo-nah-se-tah, the Cheyenne Indian girl. The question under debate has been whether or not this teenage daughter of Chief Little Rock, who was killed in the battle, also served as Custer's mistress and perhaps bore him a son.

The truth at times does not matter—there has always been a certain percentage of the public who would believe anything, resulting in a person's reputation being tarnished forever. And that was what has happened to George Armstrong Custer.

The female subject of the scurrilous accusations, Mo-nah-se-tah, also known as Me-o-tzi, which translated means “Young Grass That Shoots in Spring,” was strikingly beautiful. Custer described her in the most glowing of terms. She was about seven months pregnant at the time of the Washita battle and gave birth to a son on January 14, 1869, who assuredly could not have been Custer's child. Cheyenne oral tradition, however, contends that Mo-nah-se-tah gave birth to another child in the fall of 1869, a boy named either Yellow Tail or Yellow Swallow—common names among the Cheyenne—and that Custer was the father. No documentation of this birth exists in reservation records at Fort Cobb, where she resided.

The accusations of Custer's infidelity have been based solely on the assertions of the notorious Custer critic Captain Frederick W. Benteen and Ben Clark, who blamed Custer for his dismissal as an army scout, in addition to Cheyenne Indian oral tradition. Oddly enough, apparently no other written source at that point in time bothered to document what would appear to be an exceedingly titillating and noteworthy allegation.

Benteen's hatred and resentment of Custer would make any accusation he made, which was for the most part merely a repeating of camp gossip, highly suspect. Benteen had hated Custer from their initial meeting, with the captain who was five years older barely masking his resentment for the younger and famous Custer whom he dismissed as a creation of the press. Benteen possibly disliked Custer due to the captain's loyalty and respect for his former Civil War commanding officer General James H. Wilson, who had been a Custer rival. Benteen apparently interpreted a statement made by Custer during their introduction as an insult toward Wilson. However, Custer and Benteen were very much like each other—brave under fire, attuned to military discipline, and possessing a strong character—and that in itself could have caused Benteen's bitterness.

Frederick William Benteen was born in Petersburg, Virginia, on August 24, 1834, and moved at age seven to St. Louis, where he attended a private academy and began working alongside his father painting houses and signs. Surprisingly for a young man with Virginia roots, Frederick turned his back on the South and entered the Civil War in September 1861 as a first lieutenant in Bowen's Battalion, which later became the Tenth Missouri Cavalry. His slave-owning father, Theodore C. Benteen, was furious at this betrayal by his son and, in addition to disowning Fred, was alleged to have said, “I hope the first bullet gets you!”

Benteen, who was promoted to captain on October 1, 1861, distinguished himself in eighteen major engagements, including Wilson's Creek and Pea Ridge, the Siege of Vicksburg, and the fight with Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest at Tupelo. Most of Benteen's action took place in the Western Theater and in the deep South.

Benteen's “defection” to the North was probably not entirely due to philosophical reasons, rather encouraged by a young Unionist lady from Philadelphia named Catherine Norman, whom he would marry on January 7, 1862. Perhaps part of his bitterness could be traced to the fact that the Benteens would lose four children to spinal meningitis and raise one son, Fred, who would become a major in the army.

While his side fought for the Union cause, the elder Benteen was employed as chief engineer on a Mississippi steamboat named the
Fair Play,
which supplied the Confederacy. On August 18, 1862, Captain Benteen's company was part of a Union flotilla that captured his father's boat. The civilian crew members were soon released—except for T. C. Benteen, who was imprisoned for the duration of the war.

Benteen was appointed major in December 1862 and the following year fought in skirmishes at Florence and Cane Creek, at the Siege of Vicksburg, at Iuka and Brandon Station, and at the capture of Jackson. He was appointed lieutenant colonel in February 1864 and placed in command of the Fourth (Winslow's) Brigade of General Pleasonton's Cavalry Division. Benteen led his brigade in actions at Bolivar and Pleasant Hill, engagements on the Big Blue and Little Osage Crossing in Missouri, and in the assault and capture of Selma and the raid on Columbus. During the October 1864 Federal Pursuit of Confederate general Sterling Price, who had invaded Missouri, Benteen's brigade spearheaded the decisive charge at the Battle of Mine Creek that shattered the Rebel lines. On June 6, 1865, he was recommended for the brevet rank of brigadier general, but the recommendation was not accepted. Benteen was mustered out in Chattanooga on June 30, 1865.

After the war, Benteen was appointed colonel of the 138th United States Colored Volunteers and served in that unit from July 1865 to January 1866. He received his regular army commission as a captain in July 1866 and was assigned to the Seventh Cavalry.

Frederick Benteen was known as a solder's soldier, one who could be singled out as a role model for younger officers. He was a stocky man, with gray hair, blue eyes that can appear cold in photographs, and a smooth-shaven, round face. He quickly transformed H troop from a group of ragged civilians into the finest outfit in the Seventh Cavalry. But Benteen, like most other officers at frontier posts, had an affection for the bottle.

Along with Benteen's accusation about Mo-nah-se-tah were the questionable memories of Ben Clark, who did not refer to the girl by name and whose memories can be dismissed for the same reason—resentment of Custer. Therefore, it would seem that the credibility of the story hinges on Cheyenne oral tradition.

Plains Indian oral tradition has provided many valid details about nineteenth-century events but must be viewed under the same scrutiny as the writings of whites, which were often tainted by prejudices, failing memories, or other human factors such as camp gossip—boastful, malicious, or otherwise. Indian testimony was also often misinterpreted by accident or on purpose and occasionally swayed by a willingness to say what someone would want to hear or by a biased translation. And, in the case of Custer and Mo-nah-se-tah, there are known discrepancies in the Cheyenne stories.

Most Custer scholars deem the Cheyenne account nonsense. Common sense would point to the fact that a man of Custer's stature and prominence as a national hero would not be foolish enough to flaunt such behavior where any number of soldiers, much less correspondents—such as De B. Randolph Keim, who mentioned nothing about it in his book about the campaign—would have knowledge of it. In addition, Custer was said to have been sterile, which was likely the reason he and Libbie were childless.

Most important, however, given Custer's known moral discipline in other areas, was that his marriage to Libbie—based on their letters and testimony from those who knew them—was one of the great romances of all time. It would have taken more than a comely Indian girl to cause him to compromise his wedding vows.

Sadly, Captain Frederick Benteen was a good soldier whose deep resentment of Custer would contribute to the downfall of the Seventh Cavalry in the future and would sully his own legacy. Benteen would go down in history as Custer's most outspoken critic, making any information he provided about events or battles come under scrutiny and skepticism.

In early December, Sheridan and Custer, reinforced by the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, returned to the Washita battlefield. On December 10, downstream from the site of Black Kettle's village, they found the mutilated bodies of Major Joel Elliott and his detachment.